5 reasons why it takes arab girls so long to get ready for a date

Boys are great and also great to hang out with. Albeit I don’t do it often; not because I’m pious and conservative or whatever. It’s because it takes so GOTDAM long to prepare.

Sidenote: Let’s be real: it’s not like there is a plethora of boys tryna hang out with me. 99% of my hangouts involve my girls, a depressing amount of food, and us sadly and regretfully eating it. Well actually, the sadness comes after. While it’s happening we all look like this:

But men do not understand the hardships we face before meeting up with them. DO NOT complain if we are 20 minutes late. UM do you know what I had to do to get here. Do u know what I had to endure in order to be sitting here in front of you, looking cute as shit?? Please read the following and be enlightened:

Sidenote: That happy kid eating is making me sew happy right now. I’m dancing and moving side to side along with him.

1. Da outfit: Even if 95% of the time I end up wearing the same jeans and shirt that I always do because it’s the only outfit I own, the mental stress we go through deciding what we will wear is unreal. If I know I am going to meet up with a dude at the end of the week, I will spend all my free minutes thinking of outfit combinations. For example, all my free shower thoughts will be spent on remembering all of my closet’s contents and calculating fcking permutations to figure out the most possible combinations of outfits. If I really dig the guy I’m about to see, u best believe im asking all da girls for ideas on what to wear because they know what you own. Also be checking good ol’ pinterest for “cute fall outfits” LOL.

2. Scheming: Holy f the scheming. The web of lies that must be told in order to meet up for just a 2 hour coffee. You need to make sure all your girls are on board with your plans for the night if they are your alibis so that you won’t later shit your pants when you get the text of death from one of them. “Your mom is calling me”. And if you are like me and super bad at lying, for some reason you cannot just tell a simple lie like “hey going to coffee with (insert a girl’s name here)”. No. Your lie has a freakin background story and a plot and a narrative and effing protagonists and antagonists and a climax and conflict and the solution is you friggen going to coffee for two hours with (insert a girl’s name here).

Ex:

me: mom just gonna go grab coffee with Fatima* (*Fatima is not a real person in my life but is a real person in someone else’s life, thus she is a real person).

mom: ok

Now this is where it ends. SIKE because I am lying out of my ass my nerves make me keep talking and saying shit that needn’t be said GOTDAMN.

me: she’s a friend from school you’ve never met her before but we study together all the time.

mom: ok

me: ya she’s just been feeling kind of down lately and I’m going to cheer her up.

mom: ok

(Thought it ended? nooope.)

me: ya i don’t know. she did really poorly on her exam and she thinks she might get kicked out of her program.

mom: ok

me: ya she usually does pretty well but i don’t know what happened. It’s probably because her grandma recently passed and she was unable to study because she was so upset.

mom: ok

me: ya she was really close to her. she practically raised her while she was growing up. she told me she thought she was her real mom at one point because of how close they were.

and then eventually you just get to a point where you make eye contact with your mom and you know she knows you know she know’s you’re full of shit but you’ve come this far and you can’t give up now and you just gotta quickly get the FCK outta there before she starts asking questions like where does Fatima live and why hasn’t she ever heard of her til now and why doesn’t she just come over for coffee instead of us going somewhere and spending money.

3. Showing face: For some reason “showing face” is a thing. It’s where you don’t just leave as soon as you’re ready like everyone on the planet does. Instead, when you’re ready, you have to spend weird quality time with your parents. They will most likely be watching the news in the family room, and you just have to literally sit there for 5-10 minutes making small talk and making comments about what they’re watching. You basically have to put your parents’ suspicions at ease and let them know this is not a hotel and you are not just using them for food and sleep.

4. The too cute for coffee outfit: If I’m just meeting up for coffee with Fatima, why on earth did I spend 3 hours getting ready and why do I smell so damn good and why’s my face on fleek and why am I wearing those heels. (Sike I never wear heels but I be smellin’ good.) Or, even worst, I look so cute but in order not to be bait I throw over a decoy outfit on top and because I’m in a rush the easiest thing to put on/take off in the car is a pair of sweatpants over my sexy pants. So now it looks like I spent hours getting ready to wear sweats. And now your parents looking at you like why’s she wearing sweatpants with heels and smellin good as shit.

5. Getting picked up: I generally prefer meeting up somewhere because the anxiety surrounding being picked up by a boy in front of my house is too muhfckin real. Sometimes they will insist or my car has been stolen by a member of my family and I have no choice. Timing is everything and you cannot leave your house until all factors have been taken care of. I can’t just leave as soon as I get the “I’m outside” text. My parents are always chillin somewhere in my house and it’s obviously always somewhere that’s in plain view of “Fatima’s” car. And don’t question why I asked you to park in front of the mailbox when I live 20 houses up the street from there. One of my girls told me that before she got married to her husband, in order to minimize the stress of being dropped off, he wouldn’t fully stop the car and she would pull one of these every time they got to her house:

So yeah, if we’re a lil late to meet up with you it’s not because we’re inconsiderate princesses that can’t keep track of time. Please appreciate the efforts outlined above that we put in to see you. ( I don’t know who my target audience is anymore. Who is my target audience doe????????)